Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa last month asked a White House official to account for the contradiction between a White House blog post and statements from the Secretary of the Treasury and other officials about the relationship of the Small Business Lending Fund, or SBLF, to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Today, the Treasury Department responded. The text of the Treasury Department’s response is here. The details of Grassley’s original inquiry are available here. Grassley made the following comment on today’s response.

“With this response, the White House apparently didn’t want to answer questions about the Small Business Lending Fund and is hiding behind the Treasury Department. I wrote a letter to the White House deputy communications director asking questions regarding the statements she wrote about the Small Business Lending Fund. Since she’s a public servant whose salary is paid by the American people, making statements on a taxpayer-funded website that presents official White House positions, I expect direct answers. It’s misleading, at the very least, for the White House to have insisted that the Small Business Lending Fund and TARP have no relationship, even as the Treasury Department acknowledges that at least some banks will use the Small Business Lending Fund to repay their TARP loans.”